Thursday shorts

• Dodgers owner Frank McCourt refinanced his debt today, borrowing $250 million and using it to pay off loans from Bank of America and News Corp. that he needed to buy the team. The new deal, a private placement with unidentified partners, gives McCourt more favorable terms and is backed by the land surrounding Dodger Stadium. It includes a proviso that the Dodgers play there and continue to be owned by the McCourt family. LAT, LABJ, MLB.com. Also: Tommy Lasorda has a blog, sort of.
• Cardinal Roger M. Mahony presided over today's funeral mass at the cathedral for Miguel Contreras. A crowd of thousands marched through downtown, the Times reports.
• Geraldine Baum, who writes the New York, N.Y. column in the L.A. Times Calendar section, is headed to Paris with her husband Michael Oreskes, the New York Times veteran who has been named executive editor of the International Herald Tribune. No word on whether someone else will pick up the NYC column, but Baum says she will continue to write for the LAT from Europe.
• LA Weekly editor Laurie Ochoa is said to be planning an apology to her columnist Nikki Finke over the paper's website linking to sharp-tongued blog posts critical of Finke by Marc Cooper.
• Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky finally endorsed Villaraigosa today.
• Channel 7 has added a high-definition camera to its helicopter so those high-speed chases can be brought to us in every glorious detail. LAist
• Susan Wagner, who was a deputy to former city council member Ruth Galanter, died May 9 of postoperative complications after surgery for a brain tumor. The Argonaut